“How was this in times past?  What was the practice?” Such were the constant questions in the interior of the Tuileries, and for the answers they appealed to Madame de Montesson, to the old courtiers, the servants and adherents of royalty.  Instead of creating every thing new, they turned by degrees to the usages and manners of the past.  Always and in all countries have there been seen at courts caricatures and persons of ill-mannered awkwardness; at the opening of the court of the first consul it is probable that these existed, and appeared still more strange to those who had been used to the manners, traditions, and language of the ancient court of Versailles.  Their awkwardness, however, was soon overcome; and Josephine understood so well the rare art of presiding at a court establishment—­she was such an accomplished mistress of refined manners and of noble deportment—­she united to the perfect manners of the old nobility the most exquisite adroitness, and she knew so well how to adapt all these advantages to every new circumstance—­ that soon every one bowed to her sovereignty and submitted to her laws.

From the glittering halls of the Tuileries there soon disappeared the sword and the uniform, to be replaced by the gold-embroidered dress, the silk stockings, and the chapeau bras; and on the glassy floors of the Tuileries generals and marshals appeared as fine cavaliers, who, submitting to the rules of etiquette, left behind with their regiments the coarse language of the camp.  Many of these young generals and heroes had married the beautiful but impoverished daughters of the aristocrats of old monarchical France.  These young women, who were the representatives of the ancient noblesse, brought to the Tuileries the traditions of their mothers, and distinguished themselves by the ease of their courtly deportment and their graceful manners; and they thus unconsciously became the teachers of the other young women, who, like their husbands, owed their aristocratic name only to the sword and to their fresh laurels, and not to ancient escutcheons.

In the Tuileries and in St. Cloud there were reception-days, audience-days, and great and small levees, at which were assembled all that France possessed of rank, name, and fame, and where the ambassadors of all the powers accredited at the court of the consul, where all the higher clergy and the pope’s nuncio, appeared in full dress.

Bonaparte ventured to remove still further from the landmarks of the revolution, and from its so-called conquests.  He restored to France the church; he reopened the temples of religion, and he also gave back to the people their priests.

Just as in the days of old monarchical France, every Sunday, and at every festival, a solemn mass was said at St. Cloud; and in the glass gallery on the way to the chapel, Bonaparte received petitions and granted short audiences.  France, with the instinct of its old inclinations and habits, readily returned to this new order of things; and even those who once had with enthusiasm saluted the Goddess of Reason, went now, with hands joined in prayer and eyes bent low, to Notre Dame, to offer again their supplications to the God of Love.